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| October 15, 2003 - Outback Queensland Lightning Show |
| Written by Anthony Cornelius | ||
| Sunday, 21 September 2008 00:00 | ||
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Please don't use these images without permission! Please email me first. Click here for more information about using or purchasing photos. October 15 and 16 were shaping up to be interesting in much of central and outback Queensland with an intense cold pool progged to move into the area. The area is no stranger to cold pools, but often they develop murky, thundery rain bands due to the intensity, but that wasn’t looking to be the case for this event! Storms had developed on the 13th and the 14th in central west Queensland in very low DPs (around 4-8C) – which was encouraging. I’d been hanging out to test my new camera on some lightning…and when I heard that there was a strike on Thursday the 16th at uni I thought that I simply had to get out there and chase! On Wednesday the 15th, the 500mb temps were dropping from -14/-15 to -18/-19 – a considerable drop! DPs looked to get up into the high single figures, and with temperatures punching well into the low 30s the lapse rates were going to be nothing short of phenomenal (50C+ drop between the surface (300m) and 500mb!) It seemed like the perfect setup for microbursts and of course – lightning!!! Shear wasn’t bad either, so stuff wasn’t going to clutter into a thundery rain band too quickly (although that was going to depend when the cap broke). But 500mb was 30-35 knots and 300mb was pushing close to 100 knots! My target area was Cunnamulla – about 800km west of my place, so I headed off relatively early (5:30am) and headed out west. I made good timing, arriving in St George at 10am (~500km) – they’ve upgraded the speed limits from Moonie-St George which shaved some additional time off the journey! There was plenty of ACCAS and some Cs/As around St George, it looked thicker to my SW and clearer to the NW. I filled up fuel and found some net access to check up on things, I probably got too hesitant and should have just kept going to Cunnamulla, another 300km west but I wanted to check the obs and the latest satpic (which seemed to take three and a half lifetimes to update!) Finally I convinced myself to push further west…of course, the speed limit between St George and Cunnamulla is very frustrating…only 100!!! I thought it was going to be 110, but still didn’t make too bad timing to Cunnamulla and got there around 2:30 (after leaving St George at around midday).
About half way I saw a line of (small) CJs develop to my NW and back down to my SW which developed very rapidly and got me excited! At Cunnamulla there were storms firing all to my west, so I filled up fuel and grabbed a loaf of bread for lunch and headed south where the more dominant storms were. One storm looked rather interesting with curvature in the updraft, it then proceeded to drop a nice funnel! It lasted for around 10-12 minutes…I took video (video captures will be uploaded soon), but I was trying to get closer to it to see if there was any debris visible underneath so I didn’t stop for photos unfortunately! It finally completely dissipated after around 15 minutes, but it was the longest lasting funnel I’d ever witnessed!
Driving south I was being entertained with a barrage of lovely daytime, furry CGs to my S and SW, I stopped near the border town of Baringun and took some footage of the CGs…there was plenty of outflow dust being picked up by the storms but I was about to get rained on very soon so I headed north up the road by 20km or so and sat on the edge of the road (nearly getting bogged in one section due to the mushy edges!)
I got some gusty winds (70-80km/h) and small (pea sized hail) while being treated to more spectacular CGs! I continued to push northwards to try and remain out of the rain area and sat about 5km north of the main storm complex while more stuff was beginning to develop to the north also! While waiting on the side of the road, I had chaser convergence with James Harris! We met up (excitably) and decided to head further north to ensure we didn’t get caught in the thundery rain band. That was in between stopping briefly every so often for more video of the daytime CGs!
Arriving in Cunnamulla just after sunset, we headed just west of the town with dust blowing everywhere from the outflow of the storms! We stopped about a kilometre out of town, but to our disappointment all of the CGs were well to our south. It soon began to rain, so we headed back into town to find somewhere to eat. We met up with Michael King briefly in the main street and had a chat about the day’s events before heading to a roadhouse to grab a burger. It rained quite heavily and was quite windy on the eastern side of town, before eventually easing to light rain when we finished. While walking out the door though we could see the lightning to our S and W was much closer! We made another dash out of town and would you believe that it went from steady light rain to completely dry in the space about 2km!!! I setup the tripod and started snapping as we were treated to a lovely CG display! Unfortunately it began to rain again eventually and I had to pack up my tripod – although James had connected to the net via his lappy and was comfy and warm in his car by then! I stood outside getting drenched while trying to see if there were any other potential storms that would be out of the rain before some close CGs eventually had to force me to retreat into my car for safety! We stayed at a pub in Cunnamulla, had a quick look at some photos before both crashing to bed exhausted – both of us had been on the road since just after 5am and had done over 1000km!
Please don't use these images without permission! Please email me first. Click here for more information about using or purchasing photos. |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 31 October 2008 10:38 ) |
